Daily Times

The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Saturday ordered a recount of votes in NA-131 on the request of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz leader Khwaja Saad Rafique. Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf chairman Imran Khan defeated Rafique with a narrow margin in the election on July 25. Announcing the verdict on Saturday, the court prohibited the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) from notifying the PTI chairman’s victory. Justice Mamoonur Rasheed announced the verdict on Rafique’s petition in which the latter maintained that the July 25 exercise was ‘selection not election’.

Rafique’s counsel Azam Nazir Tarar argued that when the Returning Officer was approached for a recount, he said that the rejected votes would be examined first.

“After the rejected votes were examined [and] when we asked for the bags of ballot papers to be opened for a full recount, our request was rejected,” he said, adding that a recount on a provincial seat from the same constituency had led to a rise in the number of votes for Rafique. “My client claims that 2,800 votes have not been made part of the final count,” he said. Rafique, the Railways minister in the last government, also criticised Khan’s statements over vote recount, saying the latter would support the idea only publicly but not in the court. The PML-N leader had challenged his opponent victory in the closely contested NA-131 Lahore 9 constituency. He maintained that the presiding officers deliberately rejected hundreds of votes.

Earlier, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan was declared the winning candidate from NA-131 after recounting of 2,835 rejected votes.

Published in Daily Times, August 5^th 2018.